A Million More: Cenwalh's Next Conquesta

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Cenwalh
Green Belt
Posts: 267
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Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12467
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby Cenwalh » Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:35 pm

Some things have happened since last I posted, namely I went to Spain a couple of times, and I sat the DELE C1 exam.

On visiting Spain, I was able to carry out all interactions in Spanish (or Catalan because one of the trips was to Catalonia). These interactions included going scuba diving (where I was the only non-local) and visiting the emergency department at hospital, as well as all the normal speaking one would expect to do on holiday. I guess get Iversen's concept of monolingual (or bilingual in the case of Catalonia) travels now, where one feels comfortable just expressing oneself in the local language. I made a conscious effort to talk to people a bit more than I would in my home country, as I'm normally somewhat reserved, just to get a bit more practice in.

With regards to the DELE, I may at some point share in detail how I prepared, as I know I enjoyed reading about people's preparations when I was looking to prepare myself, but in summary it was really just about starting from a good place comprehension-wise, then brushing up on writing in a formal style, and practicing the oral part with a tutor. I am not really one to study as I have written about extensively before, but for an exam such as this I see exam technique and writing practice as essential. It's also good to look at the specifications of the exam to see what they're looking for and how it's graded.

Having said that, I of course don't know if I passed yet! I'll have to wait till August to find out. I will tentatively say that I found the reading and listening parts OK, and the writing and speaking sections were not too unexpected, but I did have some nights with poor sleep afterwards thinking about things I wrote/said that could have been phrased better.

My next steps in language learning will involve maintaining my Spanish level, and investing more time into Catalan. I can't risk getting worse at Spanish in case I have to resit the DELE, but I would also like to get to a decent speaking level in Catalan, and a good non-Spanishised Catalan at that, which I feel is some way off.
9 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

Cenwalh
Green Belt
Posts: 267
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:14 am
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12467
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby Cenwalh » Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:59 am

It's finally Catalan's time to shine! I did more Catalan in June than in the previous five months added together, although admittedly I was mostly doing Spanish for the DELE prep then. It's made such a difference doing a lot of input in Catalan for just having a really good feeling for it. Everything becomes more familiar, and there's not such a transition doing something in Catalan over Spanish/English anymore.

As I feared, it has affected my Spanish conversational skills a little bit, but not much, and thankfully my primary Spanish conversation partner is from Catalonia, so he helps sort me out. We've agreed to have a conversation or two in Catalan near the end of the year if I think I'm ready, which I might be, but until then it's input only like it's always been for me. It is endlessly frustrating to me that one needs to understand Spanish to enjoy every day content in Catalan like listening to the radio, watching the news, or watching TV series. Even most books I read that are originally written in Catalan contain at least some untranslated Spanish. Obviously I understand it - and better than the Catalan - but to not end up with a mix of the two languages I think it would really help to have purely monolingual content. I know this is a contentious point for the Catalans, but that's just my selfish 2 cents from a learner's point of view.

On the subject of learning Catalan, I was interested to hear that all school pupils in Catalunya Nord - a region of France traditionally Catalan speaking, but now almost entirely French speaking - will have access to education in/of Catalan in the next 10 years. It seems a difficult task to achieve given most of their teachers solely speak French, but they seem pretty optimistic about it. I am supposing that many of the features of the traditional dialect of Catalan from that area, including different conjugations, vocabulary and many other features will be lost as teachers learn Catalan from Spanish Catalonia to pass onto their students, but one never knows.

A final note just to mention that as I've written about before on here, I use code to tweet my Super Challenge progress to the Super Challenge Twitter bot, but that things sometimes get missed. To minimise things being missed and thus having to retweet things so much, my code now tweets content summed by title. So if anyone's looking at the stats on the Super Challenge website and wondering how I read 150 pages of a book in seemingly one tweet, that's why. For the sticklers of the rules out there, yes I've made sure that my code only sums up consumption of films over 10 minutes long.
6 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

Cenwalh
Green Belt
Posts: 267
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:14 am
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12467
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby Cenwalh » Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:09 am

I have unfortunately been a bit poorly for a few days, and somehow - unlike basically every previous time I've been ill - I've managed to get myself to do something in my target languages, i.e. I've just watched a lot of TV. I have finally found a Catalan TV show that features minimal Spanish in the form of a Catalan soap opera. I've never got into a soap opera (which is why I've been avoiding clicking on it on TV3's homepage), but hopefully I can get invested in the story line(s), or I shall have to keep looking. Link for the interested: Com si fos ahir. With almost 1,000 episodes already made, I shan't run out of episodes any time soon.

My wife and I are thinking of possibly going to Andorra next year, so if I keep things up with Catalan, I might be good enough to do everything in that language without resorting to Spanish, but we'll have to see. It is probably obvious that it shouldn't feel as easy as Spanish to watch TV in Catalan, but it does frustrate me that sometimes I miss things without subtitles, and that I don't appreciate the art of Catalan writing in books quite as much. And that considering on average I've consumed Catalan content at a super challenge pace since April 2020! The fact is, it just takes a long time to really get to grips with a language, even if it's close to one you already know. Maybe I should change the title but for a million sentences in Catalan? TBD.
5 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:20 am

Cenwalh wrote:My wife and I are thinking of possibly going to Andorra next year,.
Why does Andorra exist? is an interesting story. :-)
0 x

Cenwalh
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Posts: 267
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Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby Cenwalh » Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:03 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
Cenwalh wrote:My wife and I are thinking of possibly going to Andorra next year,.
Why does Andorra exist? is an interesting story. :-)


I tant que sí! Andorra's history is very interesting, although I didn't manage to get much cultural/historical tourism done last I was there as I was only there for a brief stop off. I should check out some of the documentaries on their state broadcaster's website.
2 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

Cenwalh
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Posts: 267
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Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
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Re: A Million More: Cenwalh's Next Conquesta

Postby Cenwalh » Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:05 pm

I've completed the films part of the double Super Challenge! There is quite a long way to go with reading though, as finding the motivation to read is a lot harder for me than finding the motivation to watch TV, and I can't do it when I'm doing something else like I can listen to an audiobook.

It has been a joy to really let loose with the Catalan, so much so that I have done more in Catalan these past two months than in the previous nine. As I was pondering before, I have decided to aim for one million sentences in Catalan just like I did with Spanish, hence the change of the name of this log. I don't know how long this will take - if it ever happens - so I guess we'll just have to carry on with it and see how we go. I did manage to get into the Catalan soap opera/telenovela Com si fos ahir, and have watched 33 episodes so far. As it seemed from the start, there is hardly any Spanish in this show which is very refreshing.

This change in course might be reversed if I failed the DELE C1 that I did in May, and also maybe if I did well in that I'll decide to do the DELE C2 exam, but we'll leave that problem/decision to future Cenwalh. Maybe I'll even do a Catalan exam at the end of 2023. I've not really spoken Catalan very much yet, but I'm supposing with a good pace that I might be able to do a B2 exam by then. We'll see...
8 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

Cenwalh
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Re: A Million More: Cenwalh's Next Conquesta

Postby Cenwalh » Tue Aug 16, 2022 4:02 pm

I passed the Spanish DELE C1!

The pass mark is at least 60% in two sections, which in turn are made up of two sub-sections (roughly corresponding to a sub-section each for reading, writing in one group, and listening and speaking in the other).

I got:
  • 23.75/25 (95%) in reading
  • 17.79/25 (71%) in writing
  • 20.83/25 (83%) in listening
  • 17.54/25 (70%) in speaking
Which gives a total of about 80%, which I'm fairly happy with. I knew I would do worst in the productive parts of the exam, and in fact the ranking of the scores is exactly what I would have guessed it would be, but I'm still happy that I got respectable marks even in my worst parts.
14 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

DaveAgain
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Posts: 1968
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Aug 16, 2022 4:48 pm

Cenwalh wrote:On the subject of learning Catalan, I was interested to hear that all school pupils in Catalunya Nord - a region of France traditionally Catalan speaking, but now almost entirely French speaking - will have access to education in/of Catalan in the next 10 years. It seems a difficult task to achieve given most of their teachers solely speak French, but they seem pretty optimistic about it. I am supposing that many of the features of the traditional dialect of Catalan from that area, including different conjugations, vocabulary and many other features will be lost as teachers learn Catalan from Spanish Catalonia to pass onto their students, but one never knows.
I read a (German) WW2 memoir last year where a lot of the action took place in Banyuls-sur-mer, the local vinyard workers speaking catalan was mentioned.

If Peter of Aragon had won the battle of Muret, Occitan France might have been part of greater Catalonia!

----
Super news with DELE result, well done You :-)
2 x

Cenwalh
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Posts: 267
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:14 am
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12467
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Re: A Million Sentences: Cenwalh's 2020 Conquista

Postby Cenwalh » Thu Aug 18, 2022 4:31 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I read a (German) WW2 memoir last year where a lot of the action took place in Banyuls-sur-mer, the local vinyard workers speaking catalan was mentioned.

If Peter of Aragon had won the battle of Muret, Occitan France might have been part of greater Catalonia!

----
Super news with DELE result, well done You :-)

My German is awful, but it's nice to hear of accounts where it was spoken. It seems to have almost completely vanished in that area within just a couple of generations. I think it's scary to think about because that could happen to any language with a populous dedicated enough to apathy (if that oxymoron doesn't make that too non-sensical).

I suppose there are lots of alternative histories that could have happened, and in some of them French would be left as the minority language...

Thanks for the congratulations and for dropping by :)
2 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

Cenwalh
Green Belt
Posts: 267
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2019 9:14 am
Location: UK
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1), Catalan (B2).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12467
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Re: A Million More: Cenwalh's Next Conquesta

Postby Cenwalh » Sat Nov 11, 2023 6:12 am

A year and three months since I've written in this log... Time for an update.

I passed the Catalan B2 exam from the Institut Ramon Llull earlier this year, which I only applied for on a whim because I happened to look it up the day entries closed. I did surprisingly well and even got full marks in reading comprehension and speaking :o in fact I did so well that I almost regretted not applying to do the C1 to match Spanish

My personal life changed tremendously and dramatocally in 2023, and so languages have taken a back seat, and are sitting somewhere between maintenance mode and slow decline. I have had the opportunity to use both Spanish and Catalan over the past year though, and this has broadly speaking gone as well as I could imagine. Whilst I used to worry about specific vocab or other issues a lot of the time, I now just go into interactions knowing I know enough to handle it, which feels quite liberating. I've also completely stopped tracking what I do and no longer set any sort of targets for language learning. I suppose I simply consider myself a user of various languages rather than a learner now, although of course the learning never actually has an end.

I'll not close up with any resolutions to post with any given frequency in my log or indeed ever again. We all know how they turn out!
6 x
Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)


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